NEWS from me

MY FAVORITE non-musical play — and almost the first one I saw live in a theater — is/was The Odd Couple by Neil Simon. Alas, I did not have the thrill, and I'm sure it was one, of seeing Walter Matthau and Art Carney in the leads. The first time I saw The Odd Couple was at the Ivar Theater in Hollywood around 1967 and it starred Jesse White as Oscar and Roy Stuart (the skinny lieutenant on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.) as Felix. I laughed so hard that, the next day, I had to run out and purchase a copy of the play so I could read the lines I'd missed.

Since then, I've seen more than a dozen incarnations of The Odd Couple, not counting the wonderful movie and the highly-variable situation comedy. The worst was probably a touring company starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman — bad, not because of them but because a feeble sound system rendered half the lines inaudible and hissy. (This was before Mr. Klugman's vocal problems. He sounds now like did on that stage.) It wasn't so terrible for me since I knew every line by heart but at intermission, my date had to ask if we could leave...and we did, along with much of the audience.

Or maybe the worst was the "female" version with Rita Moreno as Olive and Sally Struthers as Florence. This was a rewrite Mr. Simon did in '86 and not, I'm afraid, a successful one. Among the problems was that the gender switch was not fully reflexive. In the original, Felix began acting somewhat like Oscar's wife, cooking for him and complaining about how unappreciated he was when Oscar came home late for dinner. In the distaff version, however, Florence did not become Olive's husband or vice-versa, and it was hard to see what all the screaming was about. The best moments, as I recall, came from the wholly-new material and involved two male Hispanic flight attendants — Manolo and Jesus Costazuela — who displaced Gwen and Cecily Pigeon.

No, I thought, it didn't work. The Odd Couple is just about the perfect comedy and it should remain just as Mr. Simon wrote it. Maybe.

Much to my amazement and probably yours, Neil Simon has rewritten The Odd Couple. A new, "updated" version will have a tryout at the Geffen Theater in Westwood, beginning June 19. The plot, Simon says, is the same but 70% of the dialogue has been altered to make the jokes less dated. I assume this means more than the removal of the automat line and the one about the Magic Chef. Word is that the Pigeon Sisters are now the Costazuela Sisters.

This strikes me as such a terrible idea that it may be a good idea. I mean that. If someone you know who's very smart and rational suddenly said to you, "I'm going to rub cream cheese in my hair," you'd think, "Hmm...that guy's always been very smart and rational in the past. He can't be as wrong as it seems. He may not be right about this cream cheese thing but it's at least possible he knows something I don't." Neil Simon has had some failures lately but his lifetime batting average is still way ahead of almost anyone else's. He must know what he's doing, right? Okay, I'm skeptical, too.

We'll find out in June and, yes, I'm going. I dunno who's in it yet but I have to see what was wrong with the old version and how Simon thinks he's fixed it. He's the most successful playwright of the last century and — who knows? Maybe he'll wind up with an even better version of the funniest comedy ever written. Either that or a head covered in cream cheese.

CAN YOU TELL the difference between a female and a she-male? If you're driving on Sunset Boulevard, your life could depend on it. You can test yourself over at this website. (Beware! It's one of those pages that plays really lousy music.)

THE BEST of all the jokes about the Liza Minnelli wedding. This is from Lewis Black on The Daily Show...

Michael Jackson gave the bride away with Liz Taylor serving as Maid of Honor and Mia Farrow as one of the bride's maids. Minnelli said she chose the wedding party when she was drunk one night and started throwing darts at the National Enquirer.

THE PROGRAMMING schedule for Wondercon is up at www.wondercon.com. I'm hosting five events and I'll post a list of them here in a day or three.

THERE WAS SO MUCH to discuss with this year's Academy Awards that I plumb forgot my eternal gripe: The oft-repeated claim that "a billion people" watch the Oscars. This is nonsense, as we mentioned in this column last year about Johnny Hart. What reminded me was an e-mail from Peter Dunning, who writes from Kawasaki, Japan. He says...

I am E-mailing you from Japan, where, for the past three years, the Academy has sold Academy Awards Show rights to a subscriber TV service called WOWOW. Because only about 2.5 million of Japan's 130 odd million movie fans subscribe to WOWOW, and because it shows in the afternoon on a weekday, probably a very small percentage of Japanese watch the show.

There you are. That's probably about as well as the Academy Awards do in any non-English-speaking country. The Nielsen people say that, this year, 41.8 million Americans watched. Where's the rest of that billion? (The Grammy Awards are now claiming two billion viewers, or a little less than a third of the population of the Earth — an amazing assertion when you realize that, this year, less than 20 million watched in this country.)

IT WAS PROBABLY my bad phrasing — or maybe I can blame it on the root canal — but two of my saner friends wrote to say, in effect, "How can you say that The Apartment is not a love story?" I said explicitly that it was but folks seemed to think I was arguing against that notion.

My point was that Mssrs. Wilder and Diamond chose to end their tale before Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) had shown any real feelings for C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon). Wilder always said that he liked to leave things to the audience to project, and I suppose that's what he was doing here...but he was also choosing what to leave to our imaginations and what to show us, and he often showed us the cynicism, the rotten motives, and left us to fill in the nice redemptions, if any, that might have occurred after "The End." Fran is a character who has made a mess of her own life, falling for a man like Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) who shows her whatever absolute minimum of affection is necessary to get her into bed for a quickie. Only when his marriage goes kablooey does he decide he's going to marry her and even that, he manages to make feel like some sort of grudging accommodation. Still, she's ready to marry the bastard. What changes her? Learning that Baxter really cares about her. That's when it suddenly dawns on the lady that the sweet, puppy-faced guy who fawned over her and nursed her really loves her.

And, you know, I buy all that. People do act that way, and I don't think it's inhumanly out of character for Fran to suddenly say to herself, "What the hell am I doing with this jerk Sheldrake when Baxter really cares about me?" So she rushes to him and, apart from a false alarm when she momentarily fears he's offed himself, she shows him no passion, no warmth, no nothing. She jokes about them getting married but doesn't act like she means it any more than when she was talking about being in love with ol' J.D. Sheldrake. Maybe less.

Still, I like the way The Apartment ends. I think that's one of the film's strengths. I just think that, as he often did — though not always — Wilder chose a story where an upbeat romance would have gotten in the way. These are not romantic people and for them to suddenly become healthy lovers would have been characterization whiplash. How they come together is valid and very, very human and I think much of what made Billy Wilder unique is that he didn't make a dive for the quick happy ending. Was this because, in his skeptical way, he rarely saw them in life? Or was it a crafty appraisal and respect for his audience's sensibilities? Either way, it sure made for some great movies.

THE WORST THING about R.C. Harvey's essays about comic art is that when he's doing them, he isn't creating comic art...but either way, we win. He's a sharp and perceptive critic-historian and while I don't always concur with his critiques, I always learn something from his histories. Some of each are posted over at www.rcharvey.com, which — if you're a fan of comic books and/or strips — oughta be on your list of frequent surf stops. His current writings focus a lot on a freedom of speech dust-up between theoretical presidential candidate-columnist Alan Keyes and political cartoonist-columnist Ted Rall.

Lately, Rall seems out to displace Larry Flynt in the oft-spoken sentence, "Larry Flynt is the price of Free Speech" and Alan Keyes has published some writings that essentially say that the First Amendment doesn't apply to whatever Alan Keyes doesn't like, and he doesn't like one of Rall's recent cartoons. I believe Keyes is dead wrong on this one — a not uncommon occurrence with him — but I also think this is a lot of sound and fury over a non-issue. What's kind of interesting is how similar Keyes and Ralls are: They're both very angry men, they both get noticed only when expressing outrageous, over-the-top viewpoints...and neither one of them can draw.

Anyway, that's my take on the matter. Bob Harvey's is more nuanced and informative, as you'll see if you click over to his website. And while you're there, check out the fine comic art books he has for sale.

WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND (and agree with) Paul Krugman's column about right-wing politics. Here's a link.

THE PREMIUM AREA of Salon, which I keep touting here, has a good interview with Harry Shearer. The following excerpt strikes me as a very good phrasing of something I believe, and have said here less eloquently. Shearer was asked about Dick Cheney having to turn over details of his energy task force meetings and he replied...

If you live long enough, one of the rewards is to get the privilege of seeing each political cliché mouthed in turn by partisans from each side. So that the same people who were desperately demanding that we know chapter and verse about Hillary Clinton's top-secret healthcare task force are now saying, "No, no, no, confidentiality, it's an important principle." And vice versa. It explains why, or it's a consequence of the fact that most of our politicians are trained as lawyers. Because that's exactly what lawyers are trained to do: Take this side, all right, now take this side. That's what they do. And anybody who thinks that they're doing anything else is welcome to bid for some Enron stock certificates on eBay, because that is the game.

CHICAGO'S HealthWorks Theatre is staging an unusual one-night only performance of one of my favorite musicals, 1776. The twist? Gender reveral. John Adams, Ben Franklin and the rest of the Founding Fathers will be played by women, making them Founding Mothers. I am not going.

GOT AN E-MAIL from a Dudley Moore fan who says she's "hurt" that I didn't post any interesting anecdotes about her favorite performer. I have a pretty good reason: I don't have any. I loved Mr. Moore in 10 and Arthur and especially in Beyond the Fringe and any time he was in vicinity of Peter Cook. But I never met the man and don't know any more about him than any of you. Maybe less than most.

THE MOVIE CHANNELS on cable and satellite don't have to rearrange programming to do any kind of Billy Wilder Tribute. They already have plenty of his films scheduled. Turner Classic Movies is running The Fortune Cookie on Saturday night and Double Indemnity on Sunday. On Monday, American Movie Classics is running The Front Page and, on Wednesday, Showtime has Sunset Boulevard while Flix is running Kiss Me, Stupid and then, later in the day, Stalag 17. Perhaps the best tribute to the man is simply to note how there is always a demand to see his movies.

MY FRIEND Bob Ingersoll reports he had a wonderful time seeing the new cast of The Producers in New York, just the other day. And he says that Henry Goodman, who is now playing Bialystock, has added a new line. In the midst of the song, Betrayed, there's a moment when Max sits down and thumbs through the Playbill for The Producers. Nathan Lane did it in silence. Goodman mutters, "Oh, look. He's British."

WE HIGHLY recommend Joe Conason's Salon article on how the press has tried to spin the final Whitewater report. Since it's in Salon's "pay" section, you'll have to either subscribe or read it for free here at Bartcop.

WE ALSO recommend Michael Kinsley's article over at Slate about reparations to the families of World Trade Center victims. It's one of those pieces that will probably be roundly ignored because it raises an interesting question without providing either an easy answer or some opening for someone to advance a political agenda. Here's a direct link.

SO NOW we've lost Billy Wilder, too. (By the way, before I get into this: I haven't seen any of the press reports mention it but Mr. Wilder, the last few years, had been living in the same block as Mr. Berle. Quite a few older Hollywood figures live in that block, which contains a number of luxury condominium and apartment buildings, and they're all probably a bit unsettled.) Now then: Funny thing, I was just watching The Apartment the other day for the eight-zillionth time. It's still quite a movie, though every time I watch it, the ending bothers me a wee bit more. Yes, it's wonderful that Shirley MacLaine winds up with Jack Lemmon instead of Fred MacMurray...but having previously thrown herself at a bastard for quick sex, you kinda wish she'd show the teensiest bit of passion for the nice guy who seems to genuinely love her.

I love cynicism in its place and, since Billy Wilder movies were filled to overflowing with cynicism, I like most of them, especially The Big Carnival (aka Ace in the Hole) and The Fortune Cookie. Still, The Apartment was a love story. Of the major filmmakers who didn't specialize in terror, a la Hitchcock, or unabashed fantasy, Wilder probably set the record for making movies wherein nobody fell in love with anyone...at least not permanently. In The Fortune Cookie, the only smidgen of love is what Jack Lemmon feels for his ex-wife and, by the film's end, he's gotten over it.

I met Billy Wilder only once, around 1978. A writer friend of mine, Stanley Ralph Ross, had an office in a building in Beverly Hills that was full of writers who didn't want to work at home. While I was visiting him one day, a man came in and Stan introduced us so casually, I almost thought, "This can't be THE Billy Wilder." But it was, and he invited me back to his cramped little office for a short conversation. Soon after, he moved to a nicer place over on Santa Monica Boulevard in the same block as my barber. Every time I walked by and saw his name on the office directory, I'd check and see if I had the courage to go up, drop in on him and hope he felt in a chatty mood. I never did.

The one time we talked, it was mainly about his remake of The Front Page — then, his most recent film and, admittedly, not one of his great accomplishments. He said he thought he'd been "done in" by how obvious the casting had been...Walter Matthau as Walter Burns, Jack Lemmon as Hildy Johnson. It was such a natural, he said, that he never really stopped to consider whether the film warranted another version, or whether he could bring anything new to it without mangling a classic beyond recognition. He also felt he'd miscast a couple of key roles, Carol Burnett especially. (He said she was great in the dailies, not so great — his fault, not hers — in the finished film.)

I had recently read the screenplay for The Apartment and compared it to the actual film — budding scriptwriter that I was — and I asked him about the fact that they seemed to be exact twins. Had he really followed what they'd written so slavishly or had I gotten hold of a script that had been revised to reflect the actual filming? He thought for a second and said, approximately, "Shirley MacLaine always told people that Izzy [I.A.L. Diamond, his collaborator] and I wrote the film as we went along. That's bull. We only gave her parts of the script because I didn't want her to overthink her part. We had everything set in stone before we started filming." Then he paused and added, "Well, maybe not stone. Maybe clay."

"Were there any scenes in the script that weren't in the movie?" he asked. I told him no and he decided, "Then that was a revised script because I know we wrote a couple that I ended up throwing out. But we didn't ad-lib on the set. If something didn't work, I changed it, but the goal every day was to make the movie that Izzy and I wrote, and we did. If it's not on the paper, you don't have a movie."

With Billy Wilder, it was almost always on the paper. And up until near the end, it usually made a great movie.

PLEASE FORGIVE any typos in the above. I am writing this, following a double root canal which commenced this morning with my dentist actually saying, "This will not be pleasant but it'll be better than watching the Oscars." He was wrong (I didn't dislike the Oscars) but the running time for the two events was about the same, and I shed as many tears as Halle Berry.

MORE THOUGHTS on Mr. Television: Milton Berle had the reputation of hogging the spotlight, stealing scenes and insinuating himself into other acts. On his legendary variety show and in his stage shows that predated it, he would bring on great performers but rarely allow them to have the stage to themselves. The jugglers would only get to juggle a little before Uncle Miltie came bounding out in juggler garb to burlesque and make a shambles of their routine. "It always had to be about him," George Burns once told me. "If the bit wasn't about him, he made it about him." This was not always done out of ego — or, if it was, it was also with the intent of making a better show. When criticized for the practice, Berle would get defensive. He'd argue that, by injecting himself into another performer's act, he kept that performer on stage longer than they would otherwise have remained, and gave them the status of co-starring with the star of the show. Given his rate of success, it's hard to argue that he was always — or even, usually — in the wrong.

Still, he was an enormous glutton for attention. You know the joke about, "The most dangerous place in the world is anywhere between So-and-So and a camera?" The first time I ever heard it was at a lunch at the Friar's Club with a wonderful, now departed comedian-impressionist named George Kirby. Berle was the former "Abbot" of the Friar's — a kind of ceremonial grand poobah — and he'd still table-hop during mealtime and glad-hand everyone. He was at our table when someone across the room whipped out a home video camera to record some sort of greeting to an absent friend. The greeting was not supposed to involve Mr. Berle but, like lightning, he sprinted over, got in the shot and did his famous "walrus" shtick, inserting a cigar under his upper lip like a tusk. Kirby shook his head, turned back to me and said, "The most dangerous place in the world is anywhere between Milton and a camera." Indeed.

A little later, Entertainment Tonight set up to tape a few interviews with the comedians present. Berle was first up and he proceeded to do something that I mentioned in my article here on Red Skelton; something almost every comedian of his generation seemed to do, given the chance. As the camera rolled, Berle talked about there being too much smut in comedy. "I tell all the young comics, 'Don't work blue,' he lectured. "If you have talent, you don't need four letter words and filth."

Then the camera was turned off and Berle resumed what he'd been doing before the interview: Telling dirty jokes. The cleanest one I recall was the one about the newlyweds who sunbathed nude on their honeymoon. That night, the groom's privates were horribly sunburned so he went into the kitchen, took out a container of milk and plunged his member into it. His new bride wandered into the room, saw this and said, "Oh! I always wondered how men fill those things." Uncle Miltie told the joke, then looked down at his lap and added, "I'd need a dairy." (I almost played naïve — like I didn't get the reference — but I was afraid he'd show me what it meant.)

Every cast member of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World who's ever mentioned his name in interviews has spoken of his uncanny ability to always be the last one out of every shot, thereby maximizing his screen time. A TV director I once worked with told me a story that pertained to this ability...

Berle kept adding words, adding lines to his part. He had this one long speech and every rehearsal, it got longer and longer, no matter how we told him to cut it down. Finally, we got into taping and it turned into an extended monologue. He simply would not not add all those extra words. So I figured, "Well, I'll find some cuts in editing...you know, cut away from him right after the beginning, drop the whole middle, and then cut back to him for the last few, crucial lines." Well, I couldn't do that. I got into editing and that's when I realized what he did. During the speech, he took out a cigar, slowly unwrapped it and put it into his mouth. I couldn't cut the middle of the monologue out because then, the cigar would have appeared out of nowhere...and I couldn't cut the whole speech out because the last line or two were essential to the plot. So I had to leave the whole thing in, and I'm 100% convinced he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew I wanted to cut, he knew where I'd want to cut and he knew how to fix it so I couldn't cut.

Okay, those are all negative or semi-negative stories. There are a lot of good things that ought to be said about Milton Berle, starting with the incredible number of performers who owed their careers to his help and encouragement. He even found talent on the street. One day, back when he was headlining at Loew's New York State Theater, he wandered between shows into a nearby arcade. There, a printer had a little set-up cranking out business cards and letterheads and he told Berle that he dabbled in joke-telling on the weekends. They became friends and Berle began steering the job offers he couldn't take to the printer, whose name was Henny Youngman.

Another time, also in his stage show days, Berle struck up a friendship with a kid who worked the counter at a luncheonette near the theater. The kid's name was Jack Gellman and he did impressions and pantomimes so well that Berle hired him and put him in his act...but not before changing his name to Jack Gilford. There are dozens of these tales.

And he really did invent an awful lot of TV comedy, back at a time when both budgets and technology were pitiful. Part of his reputation as "The Thief of Bad Gags" came about because his show, The Texaco Star Theater, initially couldn't afford much in the way of writers. To fill that weekly hour, Berle dredged up every old routine he could remember and, in some cases, they were sketches and monologues that were more-or-less public domain among comedians, but in which some comics — perhaps jealous of his success — claimed proprietary interest. Later on, when the program's success kicked loose some funds, Berle began buying the rights to use some of the classic comedy sketches that had been written for Broadway revues. The material was properly bought and paid-for but some of the comedians who'd performed in those revues — Bert Lahr being the most vocal, Berle claimed — saw it as Milton stealing "their" signature routines. When I heard Berle talk of this — decades after Lahr and his other detractors were dead and buried — he still turned crimson over it. He said, "I was the first guy on television to pay writers and to pay them well."

I'm not certain that Berle was the first TV performer to pay writers but he was surely among the first...and he was the first to do so many things, including causing America to stay home and watch the tube. The surviving kinescopes of those broadcasts have not aged well — all the outrageous costumes, constant mugging and everyone breaking up. But this was state-of-the-art live television of the time: Berle was way ahead of what everyone else was doing. It wasn't sophisticated but it was easy to watch. (He always told the writers to make the jokes "lappy," which meant to lay them in the viewers' laps.) After a few years of the Texaco program and a few successors, he established another "first." He was the first performer to ever wear out his welcome on television. By the time he was knocked off the air — by Phil Silvers playing S/Sgt. Ernest T. Bilko — Berle had demonstrated that it was quite possible for America to tire of someone. He had plenty to do for the rest of his life — movies, clubs, guest shots, the occasional series, even some dramatic roles — but he never again reached the apogee he'd reached as Mr. Television. No one did.

I'm writing all this quickly and off the top of my head. If I sound conflicted, I am. Like many of my generation, I never laughed that much at Milton Berle and there was a time when I wondered why this pushy guy was so revered. In time, I think I came to understand that it had to do with innovation and longevity, two qualities that are rarely found — at least, together — in the comedy stars who began in television. Milton Berle was of another era, already an established performer before he or anyone appeared on TV, forced to invent and reinvent in front of an entire nation. Fortunately, he was a master showman and more than equal to the task.

The few times I got to meet him, he was very nice to me and quite willing to dive into his uncanny memory and summon up anecdote after anecdote, most of them probably true, at least to some extent. All in all, I enjoyed being around the man. Of course, I never got between him and a camera.

I SUSPECT a lot of folks under the age of 60 respected Milton Berle — assuming they really knew who he was — not because he was funny but because he was first. He couldn't appear anywhere without someone (often, him) reminding us that he was Mr. Television, aka Uncle Miltie, aka The Man Who Invented TV Comedy. He spent his life in show business, commencing as a child actor being thrust into the spotlight by a pushy stage mother. He claimed to have been the kid who sold Charlie Chaplin a newspaper in Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), though some film historians question that. Throughout his career, Berle had many great accomplishments but he always seemed to be claiming they were even greater — that is, when he wasn't telling people how large his penis was. I have no idea if that last brag was true but the others weren't that far wrong.

He was in show business almost from the time he could walk. He was a major headliner in vaudeville and a star on Broadway. He was the impetus for so many American households to scrape up the bucks to buy their first television machine. He was even, at times, as notorious a stealer of other comics' material as he joked he was.

He was at his best when he was playing straight for other comedians. On his sixties' TV show, the best segments came when he was heckled by a rude audience member named Sidney Spritzer — in reality, veteran burlesque comic Irv Benson. Spritzer would insult Berle relentlessly and stop him from performing. Eventually, they'd always get to this joke which I loved...

An old joke? Certainly. But one of the reasons Berle's material seemed so shopworn to many of us was that he'd been doing it for eons, and whole generations of comedians had helped themselves to it. (That particular Milton Berle Show didn't last long, by the way. In fact, when it was cancelled, Berle — probably with the aid of some writer — remarked, "I've figured out how to end the Vietnam War. Just put in on ABC and it'll be gone in thirteen weeks.")

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Berle on a couple of occasions, one of which is recounted in my article here on Henny Youngman. Another, which I just this second posted, is this article about a time I was poaching on the set of Love Boat. And, of course, he was one of the stars of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which is mentioned, ad nauseam, on this site. One of these days, when a little more time has passed, I'll try and write up a few other stories I heard or observed that perhaps shape or cloud my admiration for the man. For now, I'll just say that he had a rich, wonderful life and probably no regrets, apart from the fact that he didn't outlive Bob Hope...or die a few days earlier, so they could have mentioned it on this year's Oscars.

THERE OUGHTA be a term for this: When something happens and everyone pounces on it and tries to use it to advance their own causes — like when 9/11 went down and you had vegans saying, "Well, this proves you shouldn't eat meat" and bird fanciers saying, "See? This wouldn't have happened if we all fancied birds." It's kind of a grand exploitation/spin, and it seems to happen everywhere these days.

Last Sunday night's Oscars were the lowest-rated ever. Cruise the Internet and you'll find a ton of reasons, all spun according to the reasoner's mission in life. Folks who don't like Whoopi Goldberg are saying, "This proves they need to get rid of Whoopi Goldberg." Folks who have a hate on for successful Hollywood types are saying, "See? Nobody wants to watch four-and-a-half hours of Hollywood phonies." There are even those arguing that the numbers were low because too much attention was paid to black people.

Here's my answer and it's an easy one. Too often in this world, we ignore the easy answer because it doesn't advance our personal agendum. But usually, the easy answer is the right answer.

People watch the Academy Awards to the extent they care about the films and performers up for those awards. Do we passionately want to see a certain movie or actor win? If so, we watch. It's just like the World Series. If you have an emotional of financial stake in one team beating the other, you watch. If you don't care, you're less likely to tune in.

With the Oscars, this is 90-some-odd percent of what matters. The host makes a little difference, the presenters make a little difference, the length of the show tests how much we care about it versus how much we care about going to bed. But really, what it comes down to is: Do we care who wins? This year, though there were some fine movies and performances up, I don't think we did. And I think any other explanation is pure, self-serving spin.

FOR WHOM THE WILL TOILS
Published on March 14, 2002
The Boston Globe

To the Editor:

George F. Will writes: "Bush's terseness is Ernest Hemingway seasoned with John Wesley." ("Old Fashioned Values Return Since Sept. 11," Op Ed, March 12)

Well, one is hardly familiar with John Wesley's sermons, but I do know that to put George W. Bush's prose next to Hemingway is equal to saying that Jackie Susann is right up there with Jane Austen.

Did a sense of shame ever reside in our Republican toadies? You can't stop people who are never embarrassed by themselves. Will's readiness to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse can be cited as world class sycophancy.

Here's a passage from "A Farewell to Arms." It has more going for it than "terseness."

"I was embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice. I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words you could not stand to hear... Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the names of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates."

It is worth reminding ourselves that the life of a democracy may also depend on the good and honorable use of language and not on the scurvy manipulation of such words as "evil" and "love" by intellectual striplings of the caliber of our president.

NORMAN MAILER
Provincetown

APRIL FOOL'S DAY is next week and while I don't like most practical jokes, I do love witty, harmless gags. I'm remembering the first April Fool's Day after I'd gotten a modem and begun calling computer bulletin boards. This was before Al Gore invented the Internet. I logged into a B.B.S. I called once a week or so and there, in its "announcements" section was a serious, deadpan notice that due to complaints from callers, three regular users of the system — two unfamiliar names plus mine — were being banned for being obnoxious and offensive. I did a double-take that would have been considered overacting in a Ben Turpin movie and began pondering what I'd posted that could have ticked people off. Took me about ten seconds to realize that I'd been had; that the system was configured so that everyone saw their name as one of the three in the bogus announcement.

One of my favorite April Fool's Day gags was perpetrated by the Cartoon Network back in 1997. Rather than describe it myself, I'm going to quote verbatim, a squib from the daily fax report that was issued that day by the newspaper, Electronic Media. Here it is...

The Cartoon Network pulled its regularly scheduled programming in lieu of an April Fools' Day stunt. Since 6 a.m., the network has been repeating a single seven-minute short (Screwball Squirrel's Happy-Go-Nutty), along with occasional on-screen notices claiming the animated character has taken over the control room in an effort to have April 1 declared a national holiday. All fooling aside, the channel plans to resume normal programming at 6 PM — after the cartoon has run more than 140 times.

The stunt was, I thought, hysterical — the same cartoon over and over and over. They did not even rotate the five classic cartoons that Tex Avery directed of Screwy (sometimes known as Screwball) Squirrel. They ran the same one over and over and over and over. Even after it was apparent what they were doing, I found myself tuning in to Cartoon Network throughout the day, making sure they were still at it, and checking out the little announcements about the Screwy Squirrel hostage crisis.

They left all the promotional announcements and bumpers intact as per the schedule, so they'd announce, "Coming up next — The Flintstones," and then they'd show Screwy Squirrel in Happy-Go-Nutty. Or they'd say, "We now return to Thundercats" and then they'd show Screwy Squirrel in Happy-Go-Nutty. For twelve hours straight. I found myself laughing, just at the sheer silliness of it all.

Someone at Cartoon Network has a great sense of humor and a hefty serving of guts. For the sake of a great gag, they ran the risk of outraging cable subscribers — and, indeed, judging from Internet postings, a few were incensed sufficiently to phone up the channel's headquarters in Atlanta. This did them no good, of course; all they got was a recorded announcement that said that they were doing their best to get Screwy out of the control room. Others called their local cable companies to report technical problems. At least one cable service out in the Valley began carrying the channel on the first of April. One wonders what those new viewers thought.

But I know what I thought: I thought it was brilliant. And, looking at the above report from Electronic Media, I wonder if Cartoon Network played a trick on them in a press release, or if no one at Electronic Media knows how to multiply. Even if you left out commercials and promo announcements — and they didn't — it would take a lot more than 12 hours to run a 7-minute cartoon 140 times. Either way, somewhere Tex was laughing his wings and/or ass off.

MATT DRUDGE is reporting that anonymous folks at ABC want Oprah Winfrey to host next year's Oscars and that, among "influential Academy insiders," Jay Leno is the odds-on favorite. This is probably just the musing of two or three people who will have little or nothing to do with the decision...which the network and Academy won't even begin to address for many moons. (Leno, I've been told, was offered the gig a few years ago but turned it down, allegedly because he feels a real movie star should host, but probably because he saw what it did for Mr. Letterman's career.)

In any case, the Powers That Be haven't even decided who'll produce the Oscars next year. They certainly aren't going to expend any serious time thinking about possible hosts until they get much closer to the date and see who's hot and who's available. My guess is the first call will be to Billy Crystal and if he won't do it, the second call will be to Steve Martin and if he won't do it, they'll start debating a list that includes Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck, Robin Williams and maybe a dozen others. One of these days, if and when Nathan Lane makes another successful movie, he'll shoot right to the top of that list...or maybe sooner.

PAUL SCRABO is a video guy and filmmaker in New York who shares, among other tastes, my interest in the movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Over on his website — www.scrabo.com — he has some interesting pictures and articles about it. He also offers loads of other fun stuff that will probably interest anyone who enjoys this site. One treasure is an on-line version of the famous video of William Shatner performing his version of the Elton John song, "Rocket Man." There are those who call it the single most inane and pretentious musical performance ever on television...and I'm not sure I agree but I sure wouldn't waste any breath arguing against that position. Anyway, click on the link and go visit Paul's site. (But first, click on the link below and donate some cash to this one.)

JUST TO REMIND (or warn) you: I will be among the guests at this year's Wondercon, a fine comic book convention which is being held in Oakland, California from April 19-21. As has become my lot in life, I will hosting a mess of panels, including a 20th anniversary Groo discussion, a Golden/Silver Age panel and a "quick draw" competition which will pit a bunch of cartoonists against one another to see who can whip it out fast.

I'll post a list of the panels here in a week or two, and the whole schedule will be up shortly at the convention website, which is www.wondercon.com. You'll also want to go there for further info on the event. After 30+ years of attending comic conventions, I have seen it all, done it all and generally grown "conventioned out," turning down most invites. I always try to get to Wondercon, however. It's a friendly gathering of just the right size: Large enough that you'll never run out of things to do and people to meet, but not so overwhelming that just getting from one end of the Dealers Room to the other becomes some kind of Bataan Death March past rows of comic books for sale. Try and be there.

FLIX — another one of those channels you probably don't get unless you have a satellite dish — has been running Movie Movie, a very funny movie that a lot of folks never got. Written by Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller, and starring George C. Scott, Art Carney, Trish Van Devere and other fine thespians, Movie Movie is two films in one. First up is Dynamite Hands, a parody of a thirties' boxing flick. Then comes Baxter's Beauties of 1933, which burlesques the musicals of the period wherein the star can't perform on opening night and a girl from the chorus takes over. Both mini-films have much the same cast, and there's a trailer in between...and the whole thing is a lot of silly fun.

Both halves of Movie Movie were filmed in color and, when it was previewed, they experimented with making one half black-and-white. (They also had a newsreel segment then, which was eliminated, and Dynamite Hands had a different ending.) In the initial release, the prize-fighting movie was black-and-white and the show biz musical was color...but the prints now being run on cable have both halves in color, which I think is a mistake. Dynamite Hands was funnier in monochrome, and the shift to color was effective.

The film was not a big hit and never received much exposure on home video. Gelbart wrote Movie Movie II, the script of which reads even funnier, but it never got in front of a camera...so we have to settle for catching the first one on cable. If you get the chance, I suggest you do so.

JUST GOT an e-mail from Batton Lash pointing out the real punch line to the Reuters "correction." They corrected the line where it said he plays at Elaine's to saying he plays at Michael's Pub...but, in fact, that's wrong, too. Michael's Pub was sold some time ago and for years now, Woody and his band have been playing at the Hotel Carlyle.

These are the people who tell us most of what we know about what's happening in our world.

ONE MORE thought on the Oscars and then I'll shut up: I think there's a silly tendency to try to discuss "The Vote" as if all the voters were working towards one goal and with one motive; like they all got together in a big room to mark their ballots and said, "Okay, it's time to make a racial statement. Everyone vote for Denzel and Halle, but we'll give Best Director to Ron Howard because we liked him when he was Opie!" Amidst this morning's web chat about the event — including, what a surprise, many who thought it was the Worst Oscar Show Ever — I see a lot of this.

A large group of people voted without consultation, and we have only a tiny piece of information as to how they voted. We know which films and people got the most votes but for all we know, each winner could have gotten 21% of the vote in a razor-close five-way competition. Nonetheless, we not only act like the whole Academy chose Halle Berry, we pretend they all had the same thing on their brains...then we further extrapolate to discuss the mindset of the voters in all categories; what they were collectively trying to say with this year's awards.

Fact is, there probably isn't one — or even one dominant — trend. We do this with political elections, as well ("Twelve states voted Republican because they're fed up with high property taxes") but at least there, we have various opinion polls and the exact vote totals from which to speculate. We still go too far, trying to assign one thought process to a large group of divergent minds — we color a whole state red or blue based on 51% of the vote — but there's some basis, however vague, for interpreting the win. Oscar votes, apart from being even less important, have the luxury of no data whatsoever that can ever validate or belie any analysis. We can say, "Well, this year, Academy voters were trying to say they don't like the price of Raisinets at the refreshment stand," and nothing can ever prove us wrong. I think it's silly to pretend that a whole group of people — whose identities none of us really know — all spoke with one set of sensibilities and purpose. For all we know, this year's "statement" was about the price of Raisinets.

Okay. Now, I'll shut up. By the way, they still have no idea if it's going to rain Thursday.

FOR SOME REASON, this kind of thing interests me. The Reuters News Service put out a story around 9 PM (Pacific) last evening that included the following paragraph...

Allen, who is also a jazz musician and usually spends Oscar night playing the saxophone at Elaine's restaurant in New York, received a standing ovation from Hollywood's finest inside the Kodak Theatre and said, "Thank you very much ... that makes up for the strip search" — a reference to the strict security surrounding the Oscar presentations.

About three hours later, they transmitted a corrected version that amended the name of the place wherein Mr. Allen plays jazz music:

Allen, who is also a jazz musician and usually spends Oscar night playing the saxophone at Michael's Pub in New York, received a standing ovation from Hollywood's finest...

Okay, first question: Who noticed the error and felt it was significant enough to warrant moving a correction? I mean, given all the erroneous news stories that don't get corrected, why this? Did Michael's Pub call up and complain?

Second and third questions: Doesn't Woody Allen play the clarinet? And doesn't he do this on Monday nights, which are no longer Oscar nights?

WOODY ALLEN at the Oscars? How exciting is that? There aren't too many folks whose surprise appearance would mean boo but Woody, plus a lot of the "right" people winning, might mean we'll hear fewer folks tomorrow morn saying, "Boy, that was the worst Academy Awards show ever." They'll fault it for being long, and for the presenter banter (which I thought was better than the norm, and almost pain-free) but, all in all, I thought it was a pretty good show. Here are some other thoughts off the top of my cranium...

And that's all that comes to mind at the moment. Tune in next year for the next "Worst Oscar Show Ever."

SPEAKING OF PREDICTIONS: Earlier today, the Southern California forecast from the National Weather Service said showers were possible for Wednesday-Thursday. Now, it says Wednesday will be partly cloudy and we have "A chance of showers" Thursday through Friday. How solid is this projection? About as solid as smog. The following is currently posted on the website where the weather forecasters discuss why they're predicting what they're predicting. (By the way, "CWA" stands for "County Weather Area" and all the other unfamiliar terms refer to different computer model projections based on satellite readings.)

BEYOND TUESDAY THE FORECAST REALLY GETS TRICKY. AS HAS BEEN THE CASE THE LAST FEW DAYS, THE MEDIUM RANGE MODELS HAVE BEEN ALL OVER THE PLACE, THOUGH THE TREND HAS BEEN TO TAKE THE LOW FURTHER AND FURTHER WEST (A VERY COMMON PATTERN WITH THE MODELS IN A SCENARIO LIKE THIS). THE 12Z CANADIAN AND UKMET BOTH KEEP THE UPR LOW WAY TOO FAR OFFSHORE TO BRING ANY PRECIP TO OUR AREA, AT LEAST THROUGH WEDNESDAY. THEN MOST OF THE MODELS SEEM TO DROP THE LOW QUITE A WAYS SOUTH BEFORE SWINGING IT INLAND FRIDAY SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SAN DIEGO AND ENSENADA. WITH THIS SCENARIO, THE CENTRAL COAST WOULD NOT SEE ANY PRECIP FROM THIS SYSTEM, AND QUITE LIKELY THE REST OF OUR CWA WOULDN'T SEE ANY EITHER. HOWEVER, GIVEN THE CONTINUING UNCERTAINTY AND MODEL INCONSISTENCIES, WILL ONLY MODIFY THE EXTENDED BY PUSHING BACK PRECIP CHANCES BY A DAY, WHICH WOULD BE THE THURSDAY/FRIDAY TIME FRAME. THE AVN DOES INDICATE QUITE A DEEP LAYER OF MOISTURE MOVING IN AT THAT TIME, BUT CONFIDENCE IN THIS SOLUTION IS EXTREMELY LOW, PROBABLY 1 ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 10.

I'm not faulting the folks at the National Weather Service who, I believe, do a much, much better job than we admit. They're too often judged by that one day in a thousand when an inland front backs up against high pressure and it showers on a day that was supposed to be Mostly Sunny.

But there are times when predicting the weather is easy; when they can say, days in advance, that a storm is impossible or almost certain. And then there are times like this coming week when several scenarios are possible. Personally, I find it somewhat refreshing — and surely more useful — to hear someone in a position of authority admit that they really don't know. Would that the atmosphere in Washington were such that our elected officials could say that when that's the case. Because, very often, they don't know...but they can't own up to that.

AND, OH YEAH, Whoopi will do a joke about John Ashcroft wanting to put brassieres on all the Oscar statues.

I WAS GOING to take a stab at some Oscar predictions here but decided against it. I haven't seen any of the nominated films — not a one — and figured that might work against me. However, I can predict this: The ceremony will be very long and everyone will bitch about that and call it "The worst Oscarcast Ever." The ceremony is always very long and everyone always bitches about it and calls it "The Worst Oscar Ever." Until the following one. It's about the only thing you can bank on. What's more, they often act like the thing is supposed to be short and it only ran long because someone screwed up.

In point of fact, the producers of the telecast know pretty much exactly how long the show's going to run and it's fine with them. It's especially fine with the folks at ABC, who sell a lot of very expensive commercial time for the broadcast and would have to sell less if the show wrapped up in less time.

We can also predict that there will be a number of references — not necessarily "on topic" — to 9/11 but that Whoopi will say something that someone will strain hard to interpret as unpatriotic. (I find it interesting that, this week, a lot of ultra-conservatives are extremely critical of President Bush for saying he'll sign the Campaign Finance Reform bill, and also for what he may do with that immigration plan. These are the same people who charge treason when Bush is criticized by anyone for anything else.) I suppose there'll be Cheney heart attack jokes and something about Liza's wedding and — who knows? — there may even be some mention of Gary Condit. Nathan Lane is among the presenters and that might afford a dandy place for a line about how Max Bialystock got out of the play-producing business and launched Enron.

We can further predict that some actress will wear an outfit that is so outrageous — in concept or exposure — that everyone will be talking about it for weeks after. One of the great crimes against humanity is to not be properly dressed for the Academy Awards.

And we can just about wager the farm that the reviews tomorrow will say, "Worst Oscar Show ever" and fault its producers for factors beyond their control, like who won and whether they gave memorable acceptance speeches. It will remain "Worst Oscar Show ever" until the next one, whereupon they'll long for the memorable, classy moments of this year's ceremony. Enjoy the festivities.